THE BOLSHEVIK DICTATORS
as would have it that salvation lay in maintaining
a united socialist front, he answered, in the words of
Karl Marx, that 'insurrection is an art* and that what
he wanted was a band of trained revolutionaries. To
those who favoured a revolution by the democratic
method, he retorted that fia revolution is incontestably
the most authoritative thing there is'. And he mentally
selected the men, who, after the revolution had been
carried out, would be indispensable in coping with the
forces of counter-revolution. He emphasized the in-
eluctable necessity for a dictator to crush the resistance
of the bourgeoisie, to terrorize reactionaries and to
uphold the authority of the people in arms. *Such a
dictatorship must be a power based directly on force.5
He did not hesitate to say cthe new regime could only be
kept in existence by the most sanguinary of tyrannies'.
All this argumentative cut-and-thrust though it seemed
unintelligible to the fighters in far-off Russia, gained
Lenin some of his most fanatical supporters, lent
vigour to his teaching, enabled him to define his aims,
and imparted a sharper edge to his inflexible determina-
tion.
The tocsin of 1914 drowned the muttered storm of the
strikes which had broken out again more fiercely than
ever. The Russian mobilization was carried out in good
order. Under the influence of Jules Guesde, the social-
democrats, mensheviks and revolutionary socialists ral-
lied, almost unanimously, to the union sacree, resolved to
repel the forces of German militarism.
Lenin chaffed them brutally: all he could see in the
war was ca quarrel between slave-drivers wrangling